


Sakura

by Sholio



Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [16]
Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Sibling Bonding, artist!Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23139475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Cherry blossoms and parks and bonding. Another little ficlet from the Road Trip of Self-Discovery. Sometimes things are just good.
Relationships: Ward Meachum & Danny Rand
Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of DOOM [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1232444
Comments: 17
Kudos: 46





	Sakura

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PresidentMeachum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresidentMeachum/gifts).



> A VERY VERY late birthday fic for the lovely PresidentMeachum! <3

They missed the cherry blossoms in Japan. Danny was very put out by that; he and Colleen had missed them on the last trip, too.

"That would be the trip in which you were trying not to be killed by Hand every time you turned around," Ward couldn't help pointing out as they walked around a small pond surrounded by softly green trees that probably would have been fully in bloom a few weeks earlier. There were still flowers, here and there, mostly not on the trees, but Danny had showed Ward pictures on his phone of the entire place lit up in vivid pink and white.

It had rained last night, but the sun was warm, gleaming off the surface of the pond, not too hot or too cool. He'd been told by several people that the summer heat was not far off, but today it was perfect weather, like New York in late spring or early fall. Ward's jacket was too warm; he unzipped it. 

"We still took time to have some fun along the way," Danny said.

"You had fun while being chased by a ninja death cult."

"Look, if I waited to have fun until I wasn't being chased around by ninjas," Danny said, "I'd never have any fun at all."

There was a glint in his eye that suggested he was joking, but in a half-joking kind of way, because their lives really _were_ just like that. Ward rolled his eyes.

They'd bought lunch from a 7-Eleven (he still couldn't quite wrap his mind around the fact that not only did they have 7-Eleven here, but they were _incredibly nice_ 7-Elevens with really good takeout) and they found a carved stone bench to sit on, dry from the sun, with a wall behind it. Danny stretched out along the top of the wall instead, like a cat, and inhaled a bento box and most of a package of variously flavored mochi. Ward took out his sketchbook.

This was the third or fourth one he'd had on the trip. They kept getting lost: dropped off ferries, left in hotel rooms, ruined in the bottom of packs that got soaked in the rain. This one had some curled edges and stains, and Ward figured he'd lose it sooner or later, but that was part of what got him over the hurdle of actually drawing in the things. 

The colored pencils were a gift from Danny. Ward sketched in the trees on the other side of the pond, loosely with a green pencil, and then decided that he didn't want to stick to just the shades of green with an occasional splash of color in front of him. He started coloring in flowers, and honestly got a little carried away, coloring in a riot of pink and magenta with every pink or red or red-adjacent pencil in the box.

Danny propped his chin in his hand and watched Ward draw. He seemed to have infinite patience for it. Ward had tried to chase him off at first, closing the sketchbook or angling it so Danny couldn't see, but he felt cruel, especially since Danny was the one who kept buying him sketchbooks and art supplies as fast as he could lose them. So he got used to it. Danny wasn't judgmental; he made occasional comments along the lines of "Wow!" or "That's so good!" or "Is that me?" ... but mostly, as now, he just watched in silence, seemingly enthralled with the movement of the pencils on the page.

Therefore, it took Ward several minutes to realize that a couple of teenage girls were watching him too. What made him notice was that one of them took out a phone in a sparkly pink case.

He looked up, startled. They pulled back, giggling, and then the one with the phone indicated with gestures that she wanted to take a picture.

Ward's first inclination was to just hurl the sketchbook into the koi pond. And then he'd be the guy who made a couple of little girls cry. So he held up the sketchbook and the girls both took pictures and thanked him -- this was the one bit of Japanese he knew -- and he turned around to say something to Danny and discovered that Danny was doing the "V" finger thing above his head.

"I'm gonna murder you," he said without thinking.

\-- and tripped over it as the words left his mouth, because he had tried to do that, hadn't he? He really had, and it was the kind of thing you couldn't ever make up for. It wasn't something you just joked about, on a warm sunlit afternoon.

But Danny just grinned in a totally unrepentant way. The girls thanked him again and hurried off and it was just the two of them by the koi pond again.

Ward was ready for awkwardness, but it was like he hadn't said anything; instead, Danny reached over his shoulder for the picture. "Is that done? Can I see?"

"No, it's not done," Ward snapped, and hunched over it, making a point of adding all the cherry blossom details he could get away with, until finally he had run out of places to color pink. He held it out and looked at it, then tore it out of the sketchbook and passed it up over his shoulder to Danny. "Here you go, cherry blossoms for you."

Danny sat up, startled, and then he _beamed._ "This is for me?" He held it up; he looked really floored. "Ward, this is _great._ I love it. I really, really love it. Thank you."

Ward was busy packing up his pencils, and somehow he wasn't expecting to be hugged from the top of the stone wall, but, well, Danny. Ward laughed in spite of himself, and squeezed Danny's arm and then pushed him off. "C'mon, we ought to get back to the hotel."

Danny slid off the wall, holding the sketchbook page by one corner, very carefully. "Oh hey," he said, reaching around to collect his trash off the wall. "I saved you the last mochi. It's the black sesame one."

Ward's favorite, in other words. Ward rolled his eyes and took it, with the sketchbook tucked under his arm. And Danny smoothed the page down, and rolled it up very carefully, like it was precious or something.


End file.
